Restraining Government in America and Around the World

The European Version of “Welfare Cuts Are Racist”

There’s occasionally silly and dishonest demagoguery in America by those who want to equate small government sentiments with racism. The most infamous example from recent years were the malicious accusations that anti-Obamacare protesters used racial epithets.

EU austerity measures are helping to feed racism and intolerance, according to a report by the Strasbourg-based human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe. In its annual survey out on Thursday (3 May), the council’s European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), said welfare cuts and shrinking job opportunities are factors behind the recent rise in intolerance and violence directed at immigrants and other vulnerable minorities. …Some vulnerable groups – such as the Roma, the largest ethnic minority in Europe – endure popular social stigma despite national and EU-level rhetoric on equal rights.

Even by left-wing logic, I’m not sure I follow the chain of reasoning. Maybe it’s the whole English-as-a-second-language thing, but the article seems to say that welfare cuts are leading to intolerance. In the United States, by contrast, the left reverses the causality and says that “welfare cuts” are the result of intolerance.

Regardless, it’s a bit silly to say that long-overdue restraints on big government somehow are the same as racism. But don’t listen to me. I’ll defer to Walter Williams on the topic.

The one semi-accurate part of the excerpt is the part about the Roma – what Americans would call Gypsies. I’ve been in several nations with large Roma populations and had many conversations about their status and almost universally find that white Europeans feel hopelessness and resignation about Roma populations. No actual malice is expressed, but there’s definitely a form of “social stigma.”

One Response

Austerity measures LEAD to more intolerance of immigrants, and here’s why? When the government is willing to pay people to not work, then who cares if immigrants come in and take jobs. But when the government stops paying people to not work, then suddenly they need to find jobs.
Who has those jobs? Well, lots of different people have those jobs, but it’s a lot easier to complain about the immigrants who have come to “our” country and taken the jobs that we didn’t really want before.
So, the failure of the government to pay the unemployed leads to intolerant attitudes by the unemployed toward those who are working. Of course, if the government had never gotten into the business of paying people to not work, European countries wouldn’t be having these problems.
OTOH, my analysis of the situation ignores the long-term historical intolerance of Europeans towards “others,” whether the Roma, Africans, or Jews.